Posts by Martin Blunden

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones

I stand corrected

The only reason i know a little about this is that my parents used to own a secondhand electrical shop. We very rarely used to buy mobiles due to all the above problems, of not knowing if they were going to be cut off or if they were legitimate. (We always took I.D. for all stuff we bought, liaised with police for up to date stolen good's lists and if someone came in that was suspect we'd pass CCTV footage onto the police etc, My mother was a very honest person)

There was a dodgy shop in the same town that got busted for buying in hundreds of stolen phones and changing the IMEI numbers, a police officer told us all about the opertation and how they wen't about it. (unsoldering the chips etc)

We closed the shop last year as there's very little money in secondhand electrical goods, 4 years ago we could sell a dvd player for £60-80 (Sony, Panasonic etc) and make £20 on it, end of last year we were selling cheap arse dvd players (Technika, Alba, AudioStar) for £12 with a remote, and £5 without which we're only making at most £4-5 on, cheaper than the actual discs.

Title

"In practice the IMEI can readily be changed in seconds by criminals with little technical knowledge, using a PC with the right connector for the phone and suitable software that can be obtained via the Internet. The reprogrammed phone is back on the street with its new serial number in minutes, often before the original serial number has been blacklisted."

Andrew J Winks: - Changing the IMEI humber is no where near that simple and hasn't been for a good few years. It used to just be a case of connecting the phone up to a computer and as you say, using easily downloaded software you could change the IMEI number. The IMEI number is no longer stored in the general firmware area (where you can set network locks, or flash the phone to remove operator specific software builds) but is now on a seperate write once chip, the only option is to unsolder that chip, replace it with a new blank one and program on a 'safe' IMEI number. Its not a simple operation and takes a fairly sofistacted setup with someone that knows what they're doing. I know this has been the case for Nokia, Samsung and Ericson phones for at least 3 years now.